Meeting Chris in the hallway in front of the seminar room

A few month later, on February 6th he emailed me that he was getting ready to release his new product and asked me to check it out.  Problem for me back then was that I was way too busy with my own business… so as I am sure it happens to you as well so often, the software was collecting pixel dust on my computers desktop. 

Today I installed and checked out his Phantom Link Cloaker script… finally! 

Now… I am sure you have read this kind of “reviews” before where all you read about the product is how great it is and that there is nothing better in the world.  Well, let me be honest with you…

It is a good tool to have… but is it the best available in the world? Is there actually such a thing like a single tool out there that can claim to be the best in cloaking links?  No, I don’t think so.

The first feature that I like about Phantom Link Cloaker is how easy it is to install.  It comes as a single executable file that runs on your Windows computer and that installs the script for you on your own web server.

Now, this could also be seen as a disadvantage if you are on a Mac or Unix system.  But if you do use Windows, then that makes it a lot easier for you.

Now, the fact that it’s installed on your own web server can also be seen as a pro or a con.  It’s a pro because it means that you can get this script at a one-time costs since you are paying for your web server already anyway to host your web pages.  But if you don’t have your own web hosting account yet, maybe because you are just doing affiliate marketing or you simply didn’t get to that point in your online career yet, then this can of course again be seen as a disadvantage.

What else I like about it is the ability to strip out links to an affiliate program on the web page that you cloak.  Why would you might want to do that?  Well, some sites, especially those that use ClickBank for their affiliate program, are making it way to easy for people to right out steal your commissions.  They even bait the visitor into joining their affiliate program first by having links on their site saying “Make Money”, “Affiliates” or similar.  Phantom Link Cloaker gives you the option to remove this links automatically… a feature that I really like about it.

Another nice added feature is that it allows you to optionally show a pop-up or pop-under with the web page you are showing.  Here is what you could do with this… imagine you promote somebodies product and want to offer a bonus to stick out from all the other affiliates that promote it.  Now what you can do is to show a reminder about the special bonus that the customer will receive only from you on that pop-up.  This can be very useful if done right.

BTW… you probably know that I personally own a link cloaking service site called ViralURL and you might wonder, why am I even sharing my thoughts on Phantom Link Cloaker with you?

Well, it’s for two reasons…

1. It’s not just that Chris became a good friend when we met last September, but also that his product is a good one that has features that ViralURL simply doesn’t have at this time.

2. I actually don’t see Phantom Link Cloaker as a competing tool to ViralURL, but as one that targets a different group of people… even as a complimentary tool to ViralURL!

Let me explain this last point in more detail…

When are you better off with Phantom Link Cloaker and when with ViralURL.com? Or maybe you should use both?

a) If you do have your own web hosting account you have the choice to use either one, if you don’t… then ViralURL.com is the better choice.

b) If you work on a Windows computer you have the choice to use either one, if you don’t… then ViralURL.com is the better choice.

c) If you have a little bit money to invest into your online business you have the choice to use either one, if you don’t… then a free ViralURL.com account is the better choice.

d) If you want to be able to remove links that mention the affiliate program on the page your are promoting, then Phantom Link Cloaker is the only choice.

e) If you want to be able to have detailed stats of where the visitors of your cloaked links came from, how many visited today, yesterday, this month, last month, this year and last year, then ViralURL.com is the only choice.

f) If you want to be able to show a pop-up or pop-under with the page your are promoting, then Phantom Link Cloaker is the only choice.

g) If you want to be able to build your own mailing list while promoting using your cloaked links, then ViralURL.com is the only choice.

h) If you want to be able show nothing else then the page you are promoting, then Phantom Link Cloaker is the only choice.

i) If you not only like to have a link cloaker, but also a variety of traffic generating tools at the same time, then ViralURL.com is the only choice.

Can you see now what I meant that both have their place in the market?  I would even say they compliment each other and both are very useful to be used at the same time.

Which one should you go with first if you want to chose just one tool for now?  Well, look at points a) to i) above and see what’s better for you in your particular case right now. 

I hope this review was refreshingly different and useful for you.  I would love to read your comments about either one below.

‘Whatever the mind can conceive and believe… it can achieve.’
Napoleon Hill, Think & Grow Rich

To your success,

Frank Bauer

Owner of FrankBauer.name
Co-owner of ViralURL.com

What Are Web Crawlers?

Well, according to Wikipedia, their definition is:

“A web crawler (also known as a web spider or web robot or – especially in the FOAF community – web scutter) is a program or automated script which browses the World Wide Web in a methodical, automated manner. Other less frequently used names for web crawlers are ants, automatic indexers, bots, and worms.”

This is a process that is also known as spidering. This process is used by the search engines in order to provide the most up-to-date information. This information is then used to make the searches for you and me much faster. For instance, you have a website about how to finish a basement, you got the information, therefore, you want the engines to know about your site… so when someone searches this topic, voila, your site comes up in their search.

Web crawlers are also used for maintenance purposes, such as link validation and checking HTML codes. Another use is for gathering specific information from the Web, such as email address harvesting which is mainly used for spamming purposes.

Why Do You Want Web Crawlers Coming To Your Site?

You want these web crawlers coming to your site to improve your rankings. When Google and MSN use Web crawlers, they are actually analyzing an unlimited amount of Web sites, finding which ones are relevant for the most popular keywords. When you are using a good SEO, you will be showing these Web crawlers that your Website is one to be seen. It will determine whether your site is unique enough to provide information and data for a specific search.

Do All Web Crawlers Work the Same Way?

As you can see, even spiders make their style of web… as do the search engines…

No, Google, Yahoo, MSN, all have their own methods and formula for ranking, and they do not share their formulas with anyone, a highly guarded secret. But I can tell you that they will look at several factors concerning each Web site, checking its importance and overall relevance to a particular topic. They will take the keyword or keywords you are using, and use this to determine whether your page is relevant or not.

You do not need to worry so much about how heavy your keyword saturation is… if you put it in too many times, then they will pick up on that and it will hurt you in the long run. You need to put your keywords in as it pertains to your article and Web site, write for your readers, not for the Web crawlers and search engines.

Back-linking and Why It Is Important

Web crawlers will take a look at how many links there are coming to your site (its popularity), what kind of sites are linked, their quality and popularity, and so forth. Getting back-links to your site builds up your relevance in the eyes of the search engines as you can see in the illustration below.

How Do You Get These All Important Links?

Ask for them! The most popular method of the “experts” is to just ask your readers for links. If you go to a blog and leave a link or comment, just ask them to do the same for you… and guess what… they will! If there is something to gain for a blogger to link to your blog, then you can bet that he or she will do it. First, get to know them, write a blog about them, become a friend with them, then once that relationship is built, you have a friend who will provide you some great back-links.

‘Whatever the mind can conceive and believe… it can achieve.’
Napoleon Hill, Think & Grow Rich

To your success,

Frank Bauer

Owner of FrankBauer.name

Sorry that it has been so long since I last sent you an update, trust me, it was well worth the wait. I have been flat out busy working on a new project with fellow Aussie, Colin Klinkert. The project is ViralURL and we launched a month ago today!

The reason I’m sending you this email, a month after launch and not at launch was because we knew that all sites, no matter how well you prepare, have little bugs and setbacks. We did encounter a couple but they were solved and the site has been running beautifully and growing at a great pace for the last few weeks!

I am now very happy and proud to show it to you and I know that you will LOVE it:

www.ViralURL.com

The site cloaks your existing links for you to protect all the commission thieves whilst at the same time placing a Viralbar in the footer with your affiliate link built in. This allows you to build another income stream and build a nice, big opt-in list and even advertising credits if you like, all on Auto-Pilot!

That’s right, without any extra work you open up so many more avenues whilst getting click track stats so you can stay more informed about how your programs are doing.

Don’t delay joining ViralURL as I have got something special for you, but to be fair to existing member, I can only offer this to you until the end of this week.

Once you joined ViralURL for free at www.ViralURL.com you will have the option to upgrade to an amazing Gold membership that I believe you will want to have.

We have received fantastic feedback from our current Gold members and as you and I already have an existing relationship, I want to make the deal irresistible to you.

If you take advantage of the Gold membership, once you login to the members section, enter in the coupon code: “FranksSpecial” in the “Ad Credits Section” and you will get an EXTRA 15,000 ad credits (7,500 Viralbar ads and 7,500 banners ads) for FREE! But you need to act before Sunday.

Now, take advantage at: www.ViralURL.com

Whatever the mind can conceive and believe… it can achieve.’
Napoleon Hill, Think & Grow Rich

To your success,

Frank Bauer

Owner of FrankBauer.name and Co-owner of ViralURL.com

PS: On another note… Sean Wu asked me a few days ago if I could donate any of my paid products for his new site called “Operation Black Box”. Well, I agreed an as it looks like so did a whole bunch of other well known Internet marketers.

Sean provides those products now (over $10,686.84 in real value) all for free in return for name and email address at:

ViralURL.com/presents/OperationBlackBox

I have just finished reading Dane Bergen’s PPC Prophecy manuscript. What I like about this quick 50 page read is that it goes right into the meat… no filler that wastes your time.

With Dane Bergen, Author of PPC Prophecy at the World Internet Mega Summit in Singapore, May 2007

Dane explains in it the technique he personally uses to earn a living online. While reading it I had a couple of “Aha!” moments when I told myself… “I need to use this particular technique too!”.

All in all, it seems to me like an relatively simple way for the newbie to get up and running on the Internet and to replace the current j.o.b. The low cost and low risk approach makes it really easy.

For the more experienced Internet Marketer some of the content in Dane’s PPC Prophecy manuscript might bit of an old hat.. still, as an experienced Internet Marketer you also know and understand that just one gold nugget in an information product that we can pick up along the way will on the long run more then pay for the investment we made into it. I believe it’s more then worth the low price tag.

Here is a quick summary of what you will discover in Dane’s PPC Prophecy manuscript…

• How to use PPC marketing without risking thousands on advertising without generating any profit.
• It’s written in easy to understand language, no difficult jargon and the mechanics of setting up campaigns, ads and the psychology behind how everything works is fully explained.
• It starts from the very beginning and walks you through every step. From picking the best products, keyword research, creating your ads as well as testing and tweaking to get the most bang for your buck.
• How anyone can bid on keywords with low competition, (thus having low bid prices) and then turn those clicks into cold, hard cash.
• How to use the traffic you’re buying from PPC to build your own list while getting paid to do so.
• How to optimize your squeeze pages so they’re as good as they can be AND Google friendly.
• Besides the 50 page manuscript, you also get sample squeeze pages and template emails you can use to plan your follow up promotional campaigns.

Now… before you visit the PPC Prophecy web site at www.PPCprophecy.com and check it out for yourself… let me show you my US $1,558.00 value bonus offer for taking action today…

You get over 3 hours of in depth streaming audio files that will help you to run a successful business online or offline, create best selling products and to earn $10,000 – $50,000 or more a month as an affiliate marketer in any niche! Value: US $197.00

You get 117 hours of downloadable audio interviews, internet marketing lessons and transcripts from some of the GREATEST masters of business and marketing like Jay Conrad Levinson, Mark Joyner, Joe Vitalie, John Carlton, Dan Kennedy, Gary Halbert and many others. Value: US $97.00

You get online access to a 118 minute video where Russell Brunson outlines how he built a million dollar online business out of a measly 20 bucks. Value: US $167.00

Free Website with Free Hosting. Value: US $1,097.00

You get free lifetime access to my brand new Add2it VIP Partner program. Value: US $???.?? / Year

‘Whatever the mind can conceive and believe… it can achieve.’
Napoleon Hill, Think & Grow Rich

To your success,

Frank Bauer

Owner of FrankBauer.name

PPC Prophecy on Hubpages.com | PPC Prophecy on Squidoo.com

Man… I don’t know if Ian Del Carmen just has a typo on the web page for his latest product, Power Affiliate Marketing… or maybe the cost of living in the Philippines is SOOOO low that he can afford to practically give it away like that!

Let me share with you three videos that introduce Power Affiliate Marketing…

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

See, having an Internet business, which earns you money on auto-pilot is very exciting. Although it’s easy to make money with affiliate marketing, only a very small percentage of affiliates make a lot of money.

By following the advice in Power Affiliate Marketing, not only will you avoid the common mistakes most affiliate marketers make, but you will also learn how to select programs that make you residual income for many months.

Now… there is actually a lot more that part of Power Affiliate Marketing, but before you go and check it out… let me share with you my US $1,558.00 value bonus offer for taking action today…

You get over 3 hours of in depth streaming audio files that will help you to run a successful business online or offline, create best selling products and to earn $10,000 – $50,000 or more a month as an affiliate marketer in any niche! Value: US $197.00

You get 117 hours of downloadable audio interviews, internet marketing lessons and transcripts from some of the GREATEST masters of business and marketing like Jay Conrad Levinson, Mark Joyner, Joe Vitalie, John Carlton, Dan Kennedy, Gary Halbert and many others. Value: US $97.00

You get online access to a 118 minute video where Russell Brunson outlines how he built a million dollar online business out of a measly 20 bucks. Value: US $167.00

Free Website with Free Hosting. Value: US $1,097.00

You get free lifetime access to my brand new Add2it VIP Partner program. Value: US $???.?? / Year

‘Whatever the mind can conceive and believe… it can achieve.’
Napoleon Hill, Think & Grow Rich

To your success,

Frank Bauer

Owner of FrankBauer.name

PS: Check out the picture Ian and I took at the World Internet Mega Summit last May in Singapore together with Aurelius Tjin, Mark Joyner and Bruce Gibson…

BTW… the next seminar I will attend is the World Internet Main Event this September in San Francisco… will I see you there?